420 Games in Boulder emphasize pot use in athletic training

Runner's high

People running in the 420 Games in California. (Courtesy photo / Larry Gassan)

Avery Collins competing in the Ouray 100 race. He is an active cannabis user and also was the youngest person in the world to win a 200-mile race. He says cannabis helps control his anxiety and improve his focus as an ultrarunner. (Courtesy photo / Jon Burkett)

If you go

What: 420 Games, a 4.20-mile fun run, with entertainment, live music, vendors, a Power Plant strength and endurance challenge and more

When Avery Collins gets high, he doesn't sit on the couch with the munchies. He goes for a 40-mile run in the mountains.

The Steamboat Springs resident uses cannabis to help his training for 100-mile races. He's an ultrarunner with a lengthy list of athletic achievements, at the age of 24, and he also openly uses marijuana.

A shirt from a previous 420 Games event in California. The games are coming to Boulder soon. (Courtesy photo / 420 Games)

His main athletic sponsors are marijuana companies. In fact, he says he was the first runner and professional athlete to have cannabis sponsors — before big-name mixed-martial arts fighters and ex-NFL player Ricky Williams.

Collins is involved with a unique race called the 420 Games, which is coming to Boulder on Saturday. It's the first time this California-based, cannabis-friendly running event has been held in Colorado.

The goal of the 420 Games: to destroy the stigma that people who use cannabis are lazy, unhealthy stoners, and to bring attention to the many people who use the drug as part of a healthy lifestyle.

"It has never been something for me to use and be lazy. At the end of the day, you're either a lazy person or you're not a lazy person. You choose to incorporate it with your existing lifestyle and hobbies," Collins says.

The event, at Boulder Reservoir, includes a 4.20-mile race, followed by live reggae music, vendors and other athletic challenges. Although organizers do not invite the open smoking of joints at the event, because they want it to be family-friendly, they say instead of testing and shaming athletes for using cannabis, they support it.

A University of Colorado graduate and former Boulder resident is at the heart of this race.

Jim McAlpine, who now lives in California, says it was in Boulder in the mid-1990s that he first paired marijuana with exercise.

"Counter to most stereotypes, it helped me become more focused and engaged," he says. "Athletically, I realized every time I went to the gym, it gave me an extra burst of energy and made it more fun."

Two years ago, he came up with the 420 Games, as a way to offset a slow year of running a ski company, during California's drought.

"Millions of people were waiting for this situation to happen," he says. "I had hundreds of thousands come out of the woodwork, wanting to be a part of this."

Within a year, with no advertising, he says the 420 Games' Facebook page had 60,000 fans. The first event had 100 people. It doubled for the second event. And this past month's third 420 Games in San Francisco drew 1,000 participants, he says.

The popularity led him to expand to Boulder and Denver, as well as Oregon and Washington. Soon, he wants to bring the games to other states across the country, including states where marijuana is not legal.

The cannabis edge?

Collins says he began using cannabis regularly around the same time he became serious about ultrarunning.

"Mentally, it keeps me in a very at-peace head space, very calm," he says.

This is crucial on lengthy runs, he says, when your mind is your biggest hurdle.

"Unless you've run 100 miles, no one can understand what's going on out there. It's so hard to describe where you physically and mentally go," Collins says. "You'll go to hell once, twice, maybe 100 times. You face spiritual demons and have to ask, 'How tough are you? Can you really dig down deep into the lowest moments of your life, physically and mentally, and pull yourself out of them?'"

Collins says cannabis can also help counter the monotony of lengthy fitness activities, such as swimming 50 laps when training for an Ironman triathlon or running indoors on a treadmill.

The physical and mental strain on ultrarunners, who may run as far as 200 miles or for 24 hours straight, makes cannabis especially tempting in this fast-growing sport.

Collins says he uses edibles, not joints, with smoke that is less healthy. And he says he doesn't imbibe before competitive races, when it is not permitted (although the truth is many ultra-races don't have the budget to enforce drug tests).

Whether or not to allow professional athletes — and even non-pro competitive ones — to use cannabis is a point of controversy.

Some say the drug's pain-blocking abilities give users an unfair advantage. But Collins disputes that accusation.

"If you've run ultras and you're a cannabis user, it can also make you feel every last muscle in your body, and that can really suck," he says. "I feel more in tune and in touch with everything, and can feel every aching pain in my leg."

McAlpine says he ate an edible before swimming from Alcatraz Island to the San Francisco shore last year.

"It kicked in in the middle," he says. "It gets me the eye of the tiger, where I'm focused on my workout."

He says even more athletes use it for recovery. Some use it topically on sore muscles and joints, with no high-inducing THC.

As cannabis use becomes more accepted — and more widely legal in different regions — the World Anti-Doping Agency has loosened up its laws. Whereas Olympians in the past have been punished and even lost medals after being accused of use, this year's games allowed for a higher level of THC, a chemical found in marijuana.

Essentially, the change allows athletes the choice to use cannabis before or after a competition, but not during the games.

Beyond the 420 Games

The 420 Games are organized by Power Plant Fitness, which claims to be the first openly cannabis-friendly gym in the world. It is scheduled to open this winter in California.

Members will be allowed to smoke pot while exercising, and the gym will sell edibles and topical products.

McAlpine owns it with former NFL running back Williams, who played for the Saints, Dolphins and Ravens.

Boulder doesn't have a Power Plant branch (at least not yet), but it does have Ganjasana events ( ganjasana.com), yoga ceremonies that incorporate cannabis — like a mid-August event in Boulder's Highland City Club. Ganjasana has a less athletic base and promotes "healing cannabis plant-spirit yoga ceremonies" that also involve meditation and mindfulness.

Naropa University graduate and former Boulder resident (now of Denver) Stacey Mulvey also leads Marijuasana classes ( marijuasana.com). Her classes are at the Lumber Baron in Denver.

Mason Jar Events Group also holds cannabis-pairing meals every season. Its most recent event, Yoga with a View at the Boulder County Shupe Homestead, began with a one-hour Vinyasa-style yoga class, before presenting a farm-to-table brunch.

There are a number of other marijuana-friendly yoga offerings across the state, from Denver-based Twisted Sisters Yoga, which leads Ganja Yoga Retreats, to workshops at the Summit Recreational Retreat, a cannabis-centric retreat in southeast Denver.

Still, Boulder's Richard Freeman, an internationally famous yogi, doesn't advocate for the blending of the two. While marijuana may help you temporarily focus your "prana" in a limited field, "the overall effect is that the mind is less able to focus because the drug short-circuits the more holistic approach that a full eight-limbed practice cultivates," Freeman writes on The Yoga Workshop's website. That Boulder studio is his home base.

Freeman is regularly a featured yoga instructor at the annual Hanuman Festival, the author of multiple DVDs and CDs, as well as a book, and has been a leader in the yoga scene since the 1960s. He travels the world teaching yoga.

Freeman writes that yogis who use cannabis in regular connection with their practice tend to plateau and ultimately lose their edge, "intellectual capacity and brilliance."

"Both the pranic and mental backgrounds of any focused state of mind have to be cultivated meditatively throughout the day by dealing with relationships, emotions, and the practical things of everyday life," he writes. "In this way, a deeper fiery and grounded relationship to prana and to others can manifest. When relationships, details of everyday life and one's own yoga practice are dealt with under the influence of marijuana the result is often a lack of completion, an absence of external feedback and an inability to postpone pleasure."

A report published by the National Institutes of Health has the bottom line: There are anecdotes claiming marijuana can decrease motivation, and there are anecdotes claiming the opposite, the report says.

With regards to cannabis and exercise science, "at the current time, there is limited scientific evidence to support either one of these opposing lay perspectives," the NIH concludes.

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